By Matt O'Brien, Technology Writer
SEATTLE (AP) --Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities.
CEO Satya Nadella announced the new "AI for Accessibility" effort as he kicked off Microsoft's annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle is meant to foster enthusiasm for the company's latest ventures in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, internet-connected devices and virtual reality.
Microsoft competes with Amazon and Google to offer internet-connected services to businesses and organizations.
The conference and the new initiative offer Microsoft an opportunity to emphasize its philosophy of building AI for social good. The focus could help counter some of the privacy and ethical concerns that have risen over AI and other fast-developing technology, including the potential that software formulas can perpetuate or even amplify gender and racial biases.
In unusually serious terms for a tech conference keynote, Nadella name-checked the dystopian fiction of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, declared that "privacy is a human right" and warned of the dangers of building new technology without ethical principles in mind.
"We should be asking not only what computers can do, but what computers should do," Nadella said. "That time has come."
The five-year accessibility initiative will include seed grants for startups, nonprofit organizations and academic researchers, as well as deeper investments and expertise from Microsoft researchers.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company hopes to empower people by accelerating the development of AI tools that provide them with more opportunities for independence and employment.
"It may be an accessibility need relating to vision or deafness or to something like autism or dyslexia," Smith said in an interview. "There are about a billion people on the planet who have some kind of disability, either permanent or temporary."
Those people already have "huge potential," he said, but "technology can help them accomplish even more."
Microsoft has already experimented with its own accessibility tools, such as a "Seeing AI" free smartphone app using computer vision and narration to help people navigate if they're blind or have low vision. Nadella introduced the app at a previous Build conference. Microsoft's translation tool also provides deaf users with real-time captioning of conversations.
"People with disabilities are often overlooked when it comes to technology advances, but Microsoft sees this as a key area to address concerns over the technology and compete against Google, Amazon and IBM," said Nick McQuire, an analyst at CCS Insight.
Smith acknowledged that other firms, especially Apple and Google, have also spent years doing important work on accessibility. He said Microsoft's accessibility fund builds on the model of the company's AI for Earth initiative, which launched last year to jumpstart projects combating climate change and other environmental problems.
The idea, Smith said, is to get more startups excited about building tools for people with disabilities — both for the social good and for their large market potential.
Other announcements at the Build conference include partnerships with drone company DJI and chipmaker Qualcomm. More than 6,000 people are registered to attend, most of them developers who build apps for Microsoft's products.
Facebook had its F8 developers' gathering last week. Google's I/O conference begins Tuesday. Apple's takes place in early June.
This is the second consecutive year that Microsoft has held its conference in Seattle, not far from its Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this โ and those many "Babadook" memes โ unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables โ "Bah-Bah-Doooook" โ an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More